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You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we're in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn't sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man's sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God's gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There's no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man's wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?
Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn't, and doesn't, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call Grace. When it's sin versus Grace, Grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that's the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.
................Romans 5:12-21 (The Message)
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Sin
It's important to note here that we have only been talking about vices and virtues, good and evil and their relationship to each other. We are not yet talking about sin. Sin is one of the most misunderstood and abused concepts within Western Culture. Sin is uniquely Jewish, just like the words Grace and Messiah, tied inextricably to the Bible and the history of the Jews. But what is it?
I was raised a Unitarian, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that “sin” will illicit a stronger reaction from a Unitarian than any other word you could utter. I think the main objection from the Unitarian POV is that the core of their belief system is fundamentally romantic, believing that man is actually not sinful, but is rather corrupted by culture (especially religious culture), and is therefore able to avoid sin by denying it, by enlightenment, by good acts, and by working to build a Utopian community. This is actually another form of Gnosticism, salvation via “knowing”, coupled with good works, and does not require Grace (except the Grace we show each other). The reason I quit Unitarianism is that Unitarians don't really need God, they can do it all themselves. As such, they aren't really a church so much as a humanist social club. I needed God. I needed Grace. I needed Messiah.
There are a lot of definitions floating around out there for SIN. The main definitions are
Evil is doing actions that lean more to the vice end of the Vice/Virtue scale. Good leans towards the Virtue end. Neither of these have anything to do with sin. There is a ton of stuff out there on the Internet about sin, if researching it is what you're into, go for it. For the sake of brevity (and sanity), we'll keep it simple—sin is a state of being, and the fundamental feature of this state is separation from God. One can do both good and evil in the state of sin and it doesn't matter, as the ultimate end in the state of sin is separation, and by this separation, destruction. The Bible calls evil deeds “sin”, but these are residual behaviors, a function of our sinful nature.
Sin is not an action, it is a condition. Sin is in the DNA, like eye color. You can mask the color of your eyes, but you can't change it. Eye color is so normal, so universal, that people barely notice the color of other people's eyes, it just a natural feature of the human face, built into our design at the DNA level. Sin is the same way. Sin is a natural feature of the human condition, built into all of us universally at the DNA level, so common most of us barely even notice it. Since this is our natural state, no amount of restraint or control can erase the residual separation from God. We could wear the blue-colored contact lenses but underneath our eyes are still brown. We can live out all the virtues we can, but we are still separate from God. This raises a dilemma, though. If there is nothing we can do to close the separation between us and God, does it matter? If you are aware of the condition and don't care about the separation, then it doesn't matter. You've understood and decided—some like it hot. For everyone else (those who don't know or don't understand) , it matters very much.
Grace
Because there is vice in the world, as well as virtue, there is Grace. Because there is evil in the world, as well as good, there is Grace. Because we are so toxic, there is an antidote. Like sin, Grace is widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. People believe it is a free gift from God, forgiveness, prosperity, safety in times of trial, healing, all things loving and wonderful.
Grace is really only one thing—sacrifice.
To understand Grace, you need to understand the reason Grace exists.
You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we're in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn't sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man's sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God's gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There's no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man's wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?
Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn't, and doesn't, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call Grace. When it's sin versus Grace, Grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that's the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.
................Romans 5:12-21 (The Message)
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| The long and short of it.... You are broken. So am I. God can fix this. |
Sin
It's important to note here that we have only been talking about vices and virtues, good and evil and their relationship to each other. We are not yet talking about sin. Sin is one of the most misunderstood and abused concepts within Western Culture. Sin is uniquely Jewish, just like the words Grace and Messiah, tied inextricably to the Bible and the history of the Jews. But what is it?
I was raised a Unitarian, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that “sin” will illicit a stronger reaction from a Unitarian than any other word you could utter. I think the main objection from the Unitarian POV is that the core of their belief system is fundamentally romantic, believing that man is actually not sinful, but is rather corrupted by culture (especially religious culture), and is therefore able to avoid sin by denying it, by enlightenment, by good acts, and by working to build a Utopian community. This is actually another form of Gnosticism, salvation via “knowing”, coupled with good works, and does not require Grace (except the Grace we show each other). The reason I quit Unitarianism is that Unitarians don't really need God, they can do it all themselves. As such, they aren't really a church so much as a humanist social club. I needed God. I needed Grace. I needed Messiah.
There are a lot of definitions floating around out there for SIN. The main definitions are
- a.) Any thought or action that contradicts the known will of God (Martin Luther's definition, boiled down)
- b.) A willful act against a religious or moral law (note willfulness, so it is not a sin to run over someone on the street by accident)
- c.) A reprehensible or regrettable action (this would be the vices above)
- d.) Estrangement from God due to such acts (I sin, therefore I am out)
- Sinners are far away from God Sinners are bad people Bad people do bad things I do not do bad things (in my opinion) I am not a bad person (in my opinion) I cannot be a sinner (in my opinion) I am close to God (in my opinion) I am going to Heaven! (in my opinion)
Evil is doing actions that lean more to the vice end of the Vice/Virtue scale. Good leans towards the Virtue end. Neither of these have anything to do with sin. There is a ton of stuff out there on the Internet about sin, if researching it is what you're into, go for it. For the sake of brevity (and sanity), we'll keep it simple—sin is a state of being, and the fundamental feature of this state is separation from God. One can do both good and evil in the state of sin and it doesn't matter, as the ultimate end in the state of sin is separation, and by this separation, destruction. The Bible calls evil deeds “sin”, but these are residual behaviors, a function of our sinful nature.
Sin is not an action, it is a condition. Sin is in the DNA, like eye color. You can mask the color of your eyes, but you can't change it. Eye color is so normal, so universal, that people barely notice the color of other people's eyes, it just a natural feature of the human face, built into our design at the DNA level. Sin is the same way. Sin is a natural feature of the human condition, built into all of us universally at the DNA level, so common most of us barely even notice it. Since this is our natural state, no amount of restraint or control can erase the residual separation from God. We could wear the blue-colored contact lenses but underneath our eyes are still brown. We can live out all the virtues we can, but we are still separate from God. This raises a dilemma, though. If there is nothing we can do to close the separation between us and God, does it matter? If you are aware of the condition and don't care about the separation, then it doesn't matter. You've understood and decided—some like it hot. For everyone else (those who don't know or don't understand) , it matters very much.
Grace
Because there is vice in the world, as well as virtue, there is Grace. Because there is evil in the world, as well as good, there is Grace. Because we are so toxic, there is an antidote. Like sin, Grace is widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. People believe it is a free gift from God, forgiveness, prosperity, safety in times of trial, healing, all things loving and wonderful.
Grace is really only one thing—sacrifice.
To understand Grace, you need to understand the reason Grace exists.
- You are truly separated from God. The religions of the world may be wildly different, but they all have one thing in common—God is not here, He is somewhere else, and we are not with him. If you look at all the religions across time you will also start to see the trend within many of them of how a life is lived with the aim of getting to God. Even the Egyptians, who believed that their Pharaoh was a god living among them, believed that this god had to go home when he died, that he had to make a journey after death to the afterlife to resolve his godness. It's also interesting to note that humanity has created so many thousands of religions across time to deal with this problem. It illustrates that this separation is a universal condition, that sin spans all of human history, all humans, whether they can fully understand it or not, and that all humans yearn to resolve this fundamental dissonance. It is this elemental, fundamental separation that sits at the core of our essence, that drives us forever towards the need to resolve, to find happiness, a satisfy a deep, primal yearning for closure that permeates everything so pervasively that it is unrecognized as the catalyst for so many of our drives. Resolving this pain of separation is a gaping hunger at our core that is never satisfied, even though we resort to every kind of filler we can think of, whether it be virtue or vice, good or evil, art or science or religion or philosophy or recreation or sex or food or drugs or wealth or knowledge or work or relationships or whatever we can find to fill it. Only one thing can fill that gap and He's not here.
- There is nothing we can do to fix the gap. Nothing. Humans are problem solvers. Unlike other creatures that work through problems based on a finite set of instincts and capabilities, humans come up with completely unique and new inventions to solve problems, and we do this regularly. Religion is just such an invention, designed to address the problem of a God who is not here. We've tried everything—animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, righteous (and not so righteous) law, ritual, legend, and still we remain unresolved. No matter how many people we through into the volcano, it still erupts. Seasons change, droughts come and go, the universe rumbles on undisturbed by our genius and still we invent on. We are slow learners. There is nothing we can do to close the gap. It is beyond our capabilities. We can do some pretty impressive things—split the atom, fiddle around with DNA, murder each other on scales unimagined—but nothing we do satisfies the gap. Nothing we can do satisfies the gap. The reason is that there is another will involved with this problem, and His will trumps ours. Any parent of a two year old child can tell you what it's like to have a completely irrational beast screaming “NOW!” at the top of his lungs, but all the screaming, fits, stubbornness and willfulness will not make a wise parent allow such a raging beast to have sway. Knowing what is best for the child and acting on that is the job of a good parent. God's relationship to humanity is the same; we can manufacture all the solutions we want, we can invent all the rituals, all the tools, all the weapons, all the culture we can with our nearly infinite capacity for creativity, but all the rituals, religions, laws, traditions, tools, weapons and inventions in the universe cannot draw God closer. Until we understand this, until we realize that we are powerless to solve this problem, until we realize that we are not capable, and are therefore helpless in resolving this fundamental hunger, can we stop and listen for the answer.
- Spanning the gap... You are standing on top of a very tall building. It is on fire. You are alone. The smoke wasn't so bad a while ago, but now it is difficult to breath, and worse, the roof under your feet is beginning to get hot. There is no way down, as all the floors below are engulfed in flame. There is no way off, as the nearest building is much too far away to leap towards. As you are considering what to do you notice a Fireman is walking around on the roof of the other building, next door. He is struggling with a huge ladder. As you watch, he maneuvers the ladder so it is standing straight up near the edge immediately opposite to your burning building. With hand signals he shows you the plan—the ladder will come down, you will climb across it to safety. He slowly pushes the ladder out, and it hover for a moment, them drops through the sky, the fireman running up the ladder as it descends. With a terrible bang the ladder crashes down on your building, and the Fireman loses his grip and begins to fall. You notice he has a life line tied to the ladder and sigh in relief as you run to the edge and look down. The Fireman is falling, looking up at you, your eyes lock, and just as the life line is fully extended, it jerks him towards the burning building, twists his body around, and it an instant he smashes through the burning wall of the building and is swallowed in the flames. Now let's make this interesting. You set the fire. Families have died because of what you've done. The Fireman knows you did this thing, and one of the families that perished was his own family. And yet still he risked and lost his very life to save you. This is Grace. In order for us to span the gap between the burning rooftop of separation and death to the cool safety of resolution and life someone needed to do something completely crazy, completely drastic and daring, something we could not do from our damaged, helpless vantage point, something that could only be done from the point of power and safety. This is the purpose of God the Messiah. God in the form of Jesus Christ came to Earth for one purpose, to freely sacrifice His safety, His life to fill the gap between us and Himself, to wash away the stains of our sin, vice and evil so we can stand in His presence without accusation, completely vindicated, completely free.
- Decide - Would I run across the ladder? Of course, without hesitation. But many do not. Many, many people stand on the roof and say, “Oh, I'll leave the roof all right, but not by that Fireman's ladder. That ladder is unsafe, is dangerous, is superstitious—I'm waiting for the platinum ladder, the golden helicopter, the lead zeppelin, the mother ship.” The idea of spanning the gap is fine, it's just that they don't like that Fireman, that ladder. Others don't like the other building across the way and wander around and around the rooftop, peering into the distance, looking for someplace different or better. Other people stand looking up at the sky, smiling, completely unaware that their building is on fire let alone that it is about to collapse. Others know about the fire and don't care, while some other people believe there is no way off, that our purpose is to crash down in death with the building, for we and the building are really the same. Others are obsessed with the impact the smoke is having on air quality. Still others are frantically busy inventing new methods of fire fighting, and still others spend all their time studying and researching every method of bridge building ever dreamed of or created, searching for that illusive gap spanning solution while ignoring the simple answer that banged down beside them. These people are too distracted to notice what the fireman has done, or perhaps they glanced over at the ladder and thought, “I can do better than that.” No matter what the disposition, the signals have been made, the gap has been spanned and a way exists to safety, but it is up to us to decide if we will accept that invitation, if we can accept this solution.
